The Beginning of Another Jolly Holiday
by bromer
Summary: A chance meeting between two old friends, July 20, 1969.


She walked, quickly and efficiently through the darkening London streets, barely breaking pace to glance at the newspapers. What should she care if men had been to the moon? She could do it and she didn't need a silly suit for it. She paused briefly, and looked at a man near the park. He was singing to himself and drawing a kite in chalk on the sidewalk near the park. She smiled brightly and resumed her pace.

"Hello, Bert," she said softly.

"Well, then wot's this? 'Ello Mary Poppins! 'Ow long 'as it bin?" Bert's head snapped up and he smiled.

"Please, Bert, we're alone, you don't have to put on that rubbish accent anymore," she said crisply.

"Oh Mary, is it really that bad?" he said, complying. He slipped back into an accent that maybe a scholar on ancient philology would recognize, but nobody on the darkening streets would be able to place.

"Horrible," she said. "Oh Bert, how long _has_ it been?"

"I think at least twenty years, maybe forty," he said, putting the chalk down.

"I can't imagine you're still chimney sweeping," she said, motioning to the bench nearby. He took her lead and sat down next to her.

"No, no, not much of that anymore. It isn't nearly as fun now that they've gone and put in all those regulations. I make a living here and there. I do plumbing and electric work sometimes. I still does what I likes and I still likes what I do," he said, a ghost of a smile lighting his face. "Are you still a nanny?"

"Oh yes," she said. "I've just come from a job near Tottenham."

"Tottenham? I didn't know you were in the city. You should have come by with the children, had a proper adventure" he said.

"Unlikely," she said. "Pamela's mother hardly let her out of her sight. I have no idea why she employed a nanny."

"I can see why you left," he smiled. "Do you recognize where we are?"

"Cherry Tree Lane?" she said, reading the street sign from across the park. "No, I don't think I recall this," she said, her jaw tightening.

"Oh Mary, don't give me that," Bert admonished. "You know full well where this is." She gave a sad little smile. "Did you ever see them?"

"Of course not Bert," she said crossly. "You know how it is. I can't get attached to children. They are all so dreadfully banal most of them, and dirty." The word _mortal_ was unspoken but understood nonetheless.

"I did," he said quietly. He knew she had as well.

"Michael didn't get caught up in that ghastly war did he?" she said suddenly, closing her eyes tight. "He would have been too young for the first one and too old for the second one. He was thirty-six when the war started. Surely that's too old for the men to have gone to the front lines, right?"

"Oh Mary," Bert sighed. "Michael never lived to thirty-six."

"What?" she whispered.

"He went to India, as part of the viceroy's retinue, back in 1925. He got hepatitis there, and died of pancreatitis seven months later," Bert said. "I went to the funeral, paid my respects. I don't think Mr. and Mrs. Banks recognized me."

"Did Jane?" Mary asked.

"She did," he nodded. "She must have been twenty-four, twenty-five at the time, with a little one on her hip and another on the way. She asked if you were coming too. They never stopped thinking about you. You changed that whole family. You could see her, you know, right now if you wanted to. She lives in that house on Cherry Tree Lane. Took it over after her parents died."

"I cannot," she said icily. "You cannot tell me Bert, that after all this time, you can still remember all of their faces, all of their names, and bear it! I could not go to Jane. How could I? How can you?"

"Oh, of course it's hard," he said, taking her hand. She jerked, as if to withdraw her hand, but let him hold it. "Of course it's hard." He smiled kindly at her. "Did you see that men landed on the moon?"

"That is all anyone has talked about this week!" she exclaimed, a little cross, but more relieved that Bert did not push her to see Jane. "I see even you have gotten caught up." She pointed at the chalk drawing he had done. A man in a spacesuit, standing on the moon and looking at Earth in the distance. There were some other drawings too: a beach, a forest, a little house in a meadow.

"I think it's nice. It's good that they can finally see what it's like. Do you think it's made of cheese, Mary?" She smiled.

"What do you say, Bert?" she asked, pointing to the forest. "Should we go back, for old time's sake?"

"For old time's sake," he agreed. He proffered his arm and she took it. He waved behind him.

"Who on earth are you waving too?" she asked.

"Why, the reader of course!" he exclaimed. "They're not coming with us!" And with that, they jumped and disappeared.


End file.
